Ability to work in a team: what is this skill and how to learn it?

Hello, dear subscribers and guests of our blog! Julia Kel is in touch. What determines a successful leader? Ability to quickly and correctly solve problems that arise. Today we will talk about how the ability to work in a team affects success at work. You will learn how to become an attractive candidate in an interview and a valuable employee at your place of work. Find out the benefits of working together and whether it's right for you.

After reading the article, you will learn how to interact correctly with your colleagues when solving problems. And also show your best qualities in this matter.

COMPLETE LIST OF HUMAN SKILLS

What is teamwork

A team is a well-oiled machine. Where each person occupies his specific place. All members of the group, like cogs, set the mechanism in motion.

It includes no more than 15 people. Why not more? The answer is simple. Because it is quite difficult to unite a large number of people with one goal. The work of the participants is cohesive. They solve the problem according to a plan, but each performs certain responsibilities.

If previously this word was used only in the field of sports and competitions, now it is becoming more and more appropriate in the working environment. As soon as you get confused with the definition of the concepts of “collective” and “team”, dream up a little. Imagine in front of you a group of people who are participating in a competition. Their common goal is to be the first to reach the final. There is an action plan. Everyone performs their tasks: one runs, the other jumps, the third passes the standard with the ball. This comparison should be in your head in order to easily determine what is in front of you.

Set specific goals

When all employees understand what should happen in the end, it is easier for the team to set priorities and complete tasks efficiently. Goals - both short-term and long-term - should be:

Understandable to everyone . Not only the board of directors should know about the company's plans and prospects. Otherwise there can be no talk of trust. For clarity, goals can be visualized, such as sketches, graphs, or presentations.
Measurable . Not “open new stores,” but “open three stores by the end of the year.” This makes it easier to divide tasks between team members and set deadlines.
Doable . Ambitious plans are good, but you need to objectively assess the capabilities of the team and set goals that they can achieve. Otherwise, there is a risk of either scaring employees or demotivating them over time - if they regularly complete tasks by 30-40%, they will lose self-confidence.

Once the overall goal is determined, plans can be formulated for employees or departments. And apply the same rules to them.

What does the ability to work in a team include?

Every manager wants to see this skill in a candidate during an interview. What's good about him? And what does it even include? Let's talk about this now.

To make the company's activities more successful, the manager sets several goals for himself. By the way, you can read how to set goals correctly here. Some of them sometimes arise spontaneously. He is not able to solve all the tasks on his own, and there is no point in doing so. Then it’s time to involve several people who will deal with their solution.

For the first time I had the opportunity to experience teamwork while studying at the institute. We were trained to be leaders who should initially represent this process from the inside. And I can tell you, at the beginning it’s not easy, but it’s terribly interesting! Over time, as you cope with each task, you become involved in the process, and it becomes much easier.

Of course, these are somewhat different things: tasks within the framework of study and work. In practice at work, I realized that not everything is so easy. It is not possible to explain to every employee how to work collectively. And also not every person is suitable for this. We'll talk more later. For those who are not given the team spirit, there are other tasks that should be assigned to them.

So, each participant must follow certain rules that affect the entire work.

Teamwork rules

Collective decision. Every employee has the right to express their opinion, which will be heard. It will be adopted with the support of the majority of people.
Everyone is equal. Just because you have more experience or are a manager doesn't mean everyone has to agree with your opinion. Every employee has the same rights. Only criticize to the point and treat others with respect.
Transfer of experience. In such a work process, one transfers one’s experience to others. Not only can you teach someone, but also you. More professional employees in a relaxed atmosphere will show you in practice how to act in a given case.
Record all ideas. Some proposals may seem inappropriate at first. But practice shows that they often become the main decision. In order not to forget anything proposed, everything should be written down.
Control your emotions. When working, you need to forget everything personal and tune in only to business communication. The person you personally dislike may be an excellent professional in his field. It is necessary to treat such people objectively.
Accept constructive criticism. If you are criticized to the point and objectively, then you should listen to the comments. Do not take comments addressed to you critically. Better listen to them carefully and take notes.
Delegation of responsibilities. It’s very difficult to learn, but you can’t do without separation of responsibilities. You need to be able to give tasks to people who can handle them better than you, and not control their every action. After all, each participant has one goal, he is interested in quality work.
Follow the plan. In order for everything to be carried out clearly and on time, it is necessary to be guided by a plan.
Stop intrigue. There is nothing worse than an employee who, for his own benefit, causes discord in a group of colleagues. He is also focused on the overall result, but he is more concerned about the possibility of standing out in a bad way. Are there gossipers and intriguers in the group? You need to get rid of them. If you are a manager and this person is a professional, fire him without regret. Discord in the team can lead to great losses.
Share success with everyone. Forget the word "I". In a team there is only “We”. A successful result will be common and deservedly belong to every employee.
Rest together after completing a task. It is very important not only to share success among everyone, but also to celebrate it together. This will help bring the group of participants together even more.

Assign roles

Each team member should have clear tasks and responsibilities. Otherwise, a situation may arise when several people will be doing one thing at the same time, without knowing it, and everyone will forget about some important assignment.

You can make a small reminder for each employee (if we are talking about a small team) or department (for large companies) with the distribution of roles within the team. Then everyone will know who to contact if they need additional information or help.

And for the effective distribution of tasks, it is important for the head of a company or department to know each employee well, his strengths and weaknesses. This will increase the productivity of both the individual employee and the entire team.

What skills are needed

If you don't yet know whether you can work together, the best way to find out is through experience. Let’s say that today there are quite a lot of volunteer organizations. You can try yourself in them, and also for the benefit of society. But if we start from personal qualities, it is worth noting that they play an important role. You are ready for this work if:

Emotional intellect. If you develop it, then you will always find common ground in the team. To understand what level you are at, I suggest taking a free test. The test consists of 12 stages, at each of which you will be shown the face of an unknown person. An animation with an emotion will flash for just one second. You will have to define it. I completed the test in 4 minutes and scored 75%. I think this is not enough. I will develop my EQ.
You know how to quickly integrate into a team and establish communication. In one of the articles, I talked about introverts who have difficulty and take a long time to establish contact with new people. They definitely won’t like this kind of activity.
Able to quickly understand assigned tasks and begin to solve them. Slowness in joint work does not play into your hands. After carefully listening to everything they want from you, you need to immediately get to work.
Admit your mistakes and raise team spirit. If you do not consider yourself to be always right in everything, and know how to support others, then this activity is definitely for you.
Able to occupy different roles in a team. You must instantly adapt to the situation and be not only a leader, but also a performer.
Help other participants. This is important, but don't be shy about asking for help. If many employees have previously chosen to turn to you for help, this is a good sign of your readiness to work together.
The interests of the company are higher than your own ambitions.
Treat others with respect. It's great when you maintain a sense of tact towards your colleagues.
Team members want you on it. This means they like you and are easy to work with. And this determines a lot. Not every person is able to win over a whole group of people.
Colleagues often ask for your opinion on situations or their solutions. Therefore, it is valuable to your colleagues.
You always smooth out conflict situations at the initial stage. With a large number of people, controversial situations and conflicts are inevitable. It’s great if you know how to prevent them.

I listed these points for you in order to form some idea about the team member. You should already have an idea of what kind of person this is and whether you are one.

To learn how to get along with people on a team, you can undergo special training.

The online intensive “Effective Communication” is suitable for:
Entrepreneurs, executives, top managers.
For those who work with clients, middle managers, and freelancers.
To everyone who is involved in raising children.
Anyone who wants to improve their communication with others.

The author of the course is Oleg Kalinichev, an expert in nonverbal behavior, emotional intelligence and lie detection. Accredited trainer Paul Ekman International. Managing Director of Paul Ekman International in Russia (PEI Russia).

You will learn:

Communicate with closed people.
Coping with daily problems involving other people.
Influence your environment and much more.

The course lasts 1 month and contains 33 video lectures, 26 exercises, 6 tests + webinars with emotional intelligence experts.

The training consists of 4 blocks:

Emotions. Basics.
Emotional stability and emotional flexibility.
Social efficiency.
Building harmonious relationships.

How it goes:

You are watching video lectures.
Then you complete independent tasks to reinforce the material.
Participate in webinars and discuss difficult issues.
Take tests on the material you have studied.
You complete the intensive course and receive a certificate.

The cost of completing it independently is 1,040 rubles, with a curator – 2,370 rubles.

They will refund your money if you decide within 7 days that the course is not suitable for you.

Plan

The path to achieving a common goal should have a transparent structure and consist of clear stages. To do this, each team needs an action plan: for a day, week, month, quarter or longer.

To monitor progress, you can place a planning board in the office or create a task manager for the whole team. With the help of these tools, each employee will be able to see their workload and the plans of their colleagues, discuss tasks and form work groups.

LeaderTask Business is a corporate task manager that will allow you to organize collaboration and unite a team, even if its members live in different parts of the world. In it you can create a company group, add all employees, distribute roles, entrust tasks to a specific person or an entire team. LeaderTask Business has a “Repetitive tasks” function: for example, if one of the employees must submit a monthly report, the program itself will remind him of this. In addition, in the card of each task you can conduct a dialogue and discuss details, and the manager can add tags (“Important”, “Urgent”) and checklists to it.

LeaderTask Business also allows you to combine tasks into projects or create groups of projects. You can add many employees to them, assign a person in charge and set a deadline.

Plan team work

Advantages of the ability to work in a team

A serious task that has several stages of solution is not easy to cope with alone. At best, this will take a long time and will be completely unproductive. There are tasks that simply require combining different opinions. A number of advantages of group work:

you have the opportunity to participate in an interesting work project. This will give you valuable experience.
Brainstorm. An interesting form of teamwork. Participants are given a task that they must solve together. Everyone expresses their opinion and offers their options. This develops creative thinking well.
You will learn to hear others and accept their point of view objectively.
The manager will gain unique experience that will help him move up the career ladder.

So, a team and a collective have a colossal difference.

I'll give you an example. Office. The working day has just begun. Each employee sits (and there are only 17 of them) at his workplace and is busy with his own business. Everyone works in the same company, with the same goal.

Another example. Middle of a day. The head of the department gathers a group of 10 people and invites them to jointly solve one task.

Where do you think the team is and where is the team? Think carefully and leave your opinion in the comments.

Discuss the process and get feedback from everyone

First, employees may have useful and unexpected ideas for improving the work system. Secondly, they may notice some problems that the manager does not see. Thirdly, this way all employees will feel important and this will increase their motivation.

It is necessary to hold both general meetings and personal meetings with everyone. It may be easier for some to express their proposals in a group, feeling the support of colleagues, while for others, on the contrary, it is difficult to muster the strength and voice their thoughts surrounded by a large number of people.

And to ensure that even the shyest employees can share ideas, place an anonymous suggestion box in the office or periodically conduct anonymous surveys in online forms.

With the help of discussion, it is worth dealing with conflict situations: listen to everyone, analyze the arguments and only then make a decision.

Strategy for answering situational tests to assess teamwork

Our recommended strategy for solving any situational tests includes the following steps:

Taking into account the context

The first step is to examine the contextual situation. The information provided in the test script should be considered based on the following parameters: What tasks need to be performed? What are the requirements for your team, leader or manager? What are your responsibilities to complete the tasks presented? What is your position and what are your goals? You must also consider your capabilities and limitations as a manager, an employee, or a newly hired employee.

Understanding the competency being assessed

The second step in finding a solution to a situational judgment test is to determine what competencies are being assessed in the scenario and answer options. Scenarios typically describe a work conflict or difficult situation. Try to note for yourself the content of the conflict and the reaction of each side. As you think about your answers, try to understand what competencies each answer demonstrates. For example: “Does this answer reflect good communication and teamwork skills, or does it indicate a lack of these competencies?”

Let everyone express themselves

To develop, a team needs room for creativity. Therefore, it is important to create an environment where employees are not afraid to express their ideas or make mistakes (within reason).

To make taking risks less scary, have team members fill out a simple table before completing a task in which they imagine their worst-case scenario. It consists of three columns: in the first you need to write which result the employee considers the most terrible; in the second - what actions and factors, in his opinion, can lead to such an ending; the third is what the team will need to do to get out of a likely bad situation.

Encourage not only courage, but also the desire of employees to develop. Find or organize educational programs, courses and lectures for them.